SEN funding isn't a bottomless money pit

[Sogfree]

I'll preface this by saying I really enjoy my job working in a SEN school. I care deeply for the children and families I work with.

I've had 4 different conversations this week with parents where they expect an excessive amount of additional resource to be allocated to their child. They expect this as, in their opinion, it's needed. I disagree with 3 of the 4 parents that this is needed.

All 4 of the parents are going to fight the decisions county have made. Their decision to fight will mean county spend more money arguing the challenge.

Services are already broken with the increase in need. Recruitment fails, as there aren't enough speech therapists/OTs/CAMHS practitioners etc to employ.

One parent demanding extra from one of these services means another child gets less.

One parent demanding a child goes to school X at £100k per year when a place at school Y at £30k is going to meet their needs means the child who needs the place at school X doesn't get it, and extra £70k per year is wasted. And the parent keeps their child out of school for 12-18 months whilst they fight for the place at school X.

That's the reality.

Every parent wants the world for their child. I understand that. But taxpayers can't afford to give every child the world.

AIBU - parents know their child best and we should fund what the parents say the child needs

YANBU - there's only so much money to go around and parents need to accept hard decisions have to be made without challenging them

A resource recommended by the LA Literacy Consultant was refused by the school as they couldn’t afford it. It was £40. I offered to buy it, they couldn’t let that happen as it would set a precedent. I offered a donation to school funds - no, inappropriate.

My DD is in specialist provision, she struggles to sit on a standard school chair and keeps getting into trouble for sitting in a way that’s comfortable for her - understandable because the way she wants to sit isn’t safe ok a standard school chair. I offered to pay for and provide a kneeling chair that she uses at home and allows her to sit without pain. The school refused this, said they would do a sitting assessment with OT and provide an appropriate chair. Six months later we’re still waiting for her assessment, no chair has been provided, she’s in pain and getting into to trouble daily. And now she’s refusing to go to school. For the sake of a £100 chair that I wasn’t asking them to pay.

As a teacher in mainstream, I’d argue that I have some children in my very full class that I ‘manage’, but I believe they would truly flourish if given a position in a better equipped specialist provision.

I think education is woefully underfunded and teachers spend too much time just getting by. With better funding and more provision, all children could have better experiences.

In adult discussions it is considered polite to make yourself aware of the issues in an educated way.

A child’s right to education is enshrined in law.

Some of the things here are highly insulting to disabled people and their families and downright offensive. The original poster is downright offensive.

We are battling to get an EHCP issued for DS2 who has rapidly lost much of his vision due to medical condition. He is 6th form so the council are clearly trying to kick the can down the road and avoid issuing one.

Fortunately for him we are financially able to pay for extra 1-2-1 tuition because he can’t access all the materials in class as quickly and easily as other pupils (the school have helped as has the council’s VI team). He is in a private school so classes are small.
Nevertheless, the council is currently trying to argue that a teenager who has gone from normal vision to legally blind in under 1 year doesn’t need additional support.
It shouldn’t be down to a lottery of are your parents well off enough for a child to get adequate support.
I can and will fight it but it is just another burden on already stretched parents.

They are also biased, blinkered and emotional. They are not experts in SEN provision and in some cases do more damage than help. It cuts both ways.

That's how most legal things work?

It's an evidence based process. Of course winning involves preparing the evidence and explaining why that means your child needs the provision.

I'd agree that some parents are better equipped to follow the process either by thier own education or by paying, but I don't think the issue is that some people can. It's much more of an issue that some people can't

I'm a primary teacher in a mainstream school who has also spent some time teaching in a SEND school.

Funding has been decimated across the education sector for years. We all know that.

My personal belief is that parents should advocate for their child as strongly as they can. My current school is actually very good at supporting children with additional needs in theory but we are still limited in what we can do in practice.

My school simply doesn't have the human or physical resources to meet every child's needs appropriately. I'm only one person (not had a TA for 7 years) and 5/30 of my class have significant needs due to ASD, ADHD or cognition and learning needs/GDD. (And that's before you even get to the children who have behavioural needs due to poor parenting or just being 'the bottom 20%' who would benefit from additional support in class, extra reading etc). I go above and beyond because I care and I'm passionate about it (as is my school) but it's still not enough because the environment is just wrong for some.

And it's getting worse. Our SENDCo is brilliant but she's floored and exhausted by EHCP applications that are rejected and must be appealed and collecting the evidence that is now required. Everything is a battle. A battle for EHCPs, a battle for appropriate provision, a battle for funding. We have children in Reception who simply should not be in a mainstream school due to their level of need. And it's still a battle to get them the right provision.

And our LA is no longer accepting private diagnoses (eg ASD/ADHD) for EHCPs while also doubling the length of time we have to evidence support in school along with the NHS waiting times also being increased and the issues around diagnosis there. Sometimes schools are crap and sometimes we're just up against the same issues that parents are in a system that is designed to fail you.

I find it really hard to read on here about parents and children struggling where a school has refused to apply for an EHCP. And other posters say that schools are just crap.and they can do it themselves. When they describe the reasons, I sometimes think, they'll never get one. Not because their school is shit or their child doesn't have significant needs but when I think about the children we have who have been repeatedly refused them at my own school, I can understand why their school has said no. Sadly.

So mainstream.schools are left to struggle, children and parents are left to struggle and then everyone points the finger of blame at both for failing.

It's not about whether a child is able to meet academic 'norms' or 5 GCSEs or whatever. Every single person who is born deserves an education and opportunity at life that is appropriate to them, their needs and their abilities. They all deserve to be successful whatever success looks like to them or whatever they need to achieve it. To me, that's a marker of a successful society. Not how much wealth we have very created for (let's be honest) a few individuals.

And as wonderful as it is to read stories of parents who've won their battle and their children have not only survived but thrived, it angers me that it was necessary.

My frustration is never for the parents who want more for their child but a broken system that makes the fight necessary. No one should be fighting for their child because it shouldn't be necessary.

I can see it from both sides. Our local SEN school where my children went isn't great. My own children and I know other children who went there have regressed.

My son got to 10 and they could no longer manage him. He was also hitting out at everyone. I could no longer take both DC out the house as my son was trying to run accross roads to do his obsessions. My daughter is also severely autistic and has epilepsy. He loves his sister he's never ran off when she's had a seizure. But there's always that 1 time he might.

Social services stepped in and decided a residential school would be best. If I had said no SS would have taken me to court. But they say also admitted if DS had been my only SEN child he highly likely wouldn't have got the opportunity. That school changed my boy completely. If he hadn't have gone there I know he would have ended up locked up in 1 of those secure hospitals.

He might not be able to get a job but he's now a young adult living in sheltered housing with three other young men. He's happy and so am to. To think how he could have turned out if he had stayed in the local SEN school.

I will reiterate my point about adult discussion, everyone is entitled to their view, our opinions are shaped by our experiences, reading, work and relationships. An adult discussion should be possible without insults or barbed comments.

Your post is a red herring because the SEN tribunal already HAS the right to place the child in a cheaper school if both schools are capable of meeting the child’s needs. For parent to get the more expensive place they have to prove their case in a court of law, ie that it is in accordance with the Education Act and the SEN Code of Practice it is the only school that can meet need. Furthermore the Special Needs Tribunal have the ability to override the parents choice if it is deemed incompatible with the use of public resources. What makes you think you know more about the child’s needs than the parents, educational psychologists, paediatricians, physios etc whose evidence you need to present at tribunal? Maybe you are in the wrong job if you don’t understand how the SEN system works or can understand parents doing the best for their vulnerable children.

Special needs provision goes upto the age of 25, or it did when my son was going to uni. He had an amazing assessment where he got all sorts of specialist equipment/software etc. Don’t give up!

What's offensive about the opening post?

It's not offensive to acknowledge that budgets are finite.

County councils are in a death spiral at the minute because of rising social care and SEN costs.

We have to be able to discuss as a population where the line is.

Our local council has cut nearly all library funding, road repairs, bus services, outdoor activity centres used for school trips, they have slashed anything and everything, yet the budget for SEN and adult social care keeps soaring.

I would love there to be an unlimited budget for everything, but there isn't.

And what public funding there is needs to be fairly and rationally distributed.

@ButItsASecret the LA can’t lawfully have a blanket policy of refusing to accept independent diagnoses. Neither do schools need to evidence a set number of APDR cycles first. Schools needs to know the actual law. Not LA ‘policy’.

@Sherararara sadly, some schools are biased, blinkered, and are not experts in SEN law either.

Poll result is revealing.

SEN is huge industry and many are making millions of profits from “education” as so many private businesses take ECHP students and charge a fortune for “provisions”. State maintained schools quite rightly can’t make profit from education. Private business can and do. Also, thousands of students are schooled by tutoring companies in their bedrooms/online which is another waste of money/mess/time bomb.

Agreed there’s nothing offensive in the OP.
These days people take offence at uncomfortable truths and things they don’t agree with or simply don’t like.

That's absolutely disgraceful.

I hope your son gets the support he needs and that he is clearly entitled to.

DS got his EHCP at age 3 and was in an independent special school by age 7 at a cost of c. £100k per year, plus transport costs. He’ll be there until he’s 18. In every SEN case I’ve seen over the years, the LA takes every opportunity not to help, or to do the cheapest possible solution, or to do fuck all for as long as possible to defray the costs. If a tribunal says costly specialist is needed, that’s good enough for me. Parents wouldn’t need to be so sharp-elbowed if the system wasn’t totally rigged against these children.

Children who do not get adequate care through the school system and whose parents are not supported will go into the care system.

This is mostly run for profit by companies who are required to have no qualifications in Send and over half of those that come out will end up in the prison system.

If you want to save money, listen to parents. Support them to support their children.

The costs of children's homes are literally hundreds of thousands of pounds a year per child. It is staggering. Please educate yourselves before you write drivel on the Internet.

I think it's totally understandable that parents will push for whatever support they can get for their kids. Indeed, it's right for them to do so because speaking up on behalf of your child is part of your job as a parent.

What we need is a system that can make fair decisions that are based on the child's actual needs and which don't depend on the quality of the parents' advocacy. We're a long way off that at the moment.

No, these days people with no comprehension expect their ignorant opinions to be listened to.

Incidentally I feel very strongly that a lot of the SEND issues the UK is now experiencing are a direct consequence of government policy in education. Particularly the last Tory government.

They closed sure start centres - completely foolish when there is really very robust data on the impact of high quality early years input on long term life chances of children born into poverty and deprivation.

They made a highly rigid and overstuffed academic curriculum, made it immensely stressful and pressured, deliberately removed coursework and reinstated one off summative exams, and penalised via OFSTED any school that was offering alternative qualification systems such as btec or foundation programmes. There are thousands of teens sitting in classrooms every day knowing for a fact that they will not pass any GCSEs, yet they are not offered any alternative in many schools. I think I would be disruptive and uninterested if I had to sit 6 hours a day listening to stuff I don't understand and knowing I will be leaving with nothing at the end of it.

They and the exam boards then made exams so difficult that even kids doing ok feel like they are doing terribly - example, grade 9 biology GCSE is attained by getting about 67 percent in the exams. The top 5 or so percent get grade 9. What on earth is the point of an exam so difficult that even the most able 5 Percent cannot access 1/3 of it? What does that do to the confidence and self esteem of ordinary bright kids who are routinely getting less than half marks on exams? You need about 46 percent on biology to get a grade 6 - a good pass. WTF are they playing at? Maths higher paper is about 26 percent to pass. There is absolutely no need for it , and the result is a crisis of confidence and stress in many kids - especially autistic ones who find other aspects of school also very difficult. The result is an explosion in "school refusal" - EBSA- which is a trauma response. The system is traumatising our kids. And there is no need for it.

They academised and spent millions on the Free school bollocks, and now some MAT leaders are on obscene salaries, and many schools are ideologically driven spaces that don't adapt enough to meet children's needs when they differ from the norm. They also cut the legs from LAs who retain all the responsibility for SEND in a system where they can't actually direct schools' ideology or philosophy to be more inclusive, or build more schools themselves to support children.

They could solve the SEND crisis very simply by reducing the demands of the curriculum, giving a middle tier of exams, and enabling and encouraging schools to offer a wider range of qualifications so that all young people are working towards successfully leaving with a set of appropriate qualifications. It's is a scandal and an outrage and this generation is suffering.

There would be no need for multiple new special schools if ordinary schools were more inclusive and adaptive.

And i think it can't just be based on need, but also on recognition that budgets are finite and that needs have to be balanced.

I agree to a point. Some parents seem to have understandably got into fight mode as it is really unbelievably hard for some parents. I’ve seen both sides as a teacher in mainstream and special and blended, and as a parent .

This means that sometimes parents fight over big and small things and can’t believe you are on their side, you also want what’s good for their child, and you know a different side of their child. Parents don’t all know how education works and don’t understand that one to one support should be the absolute last resort and should be for as short a time as possible. It really doesn’t help a child or young person if they can only do something if someone is by their side all the time monitoring, encouraging, explaining.

Of course some will need physical help until they can get into a situation where they can use tech, or will always need physical care for somethings, but for behaviour and motivation and academic tasks it is much better for the long term to encourage self motivation and independence. If a child’s one to one TA is sometimes used for a group so they’re on hand to help but not Velcroed to the named child who has the support, it really is better for the child.

And public finances do need to be accountable (given the reality of limited funding) and it is really sad how some fight for an expensive private special school with good marketing, believing that if it’s hard to get and expensive it must be better when often they’re not. Too much public money is spent on dodgy private special schools and school transport. I wish there could be a system reset and the money spent on local schools to catch children before it all goes wrong.